Human (and other mammals) would secrete cerumen (ear wax) to protect the skin of the ear canal against
pathogens and insects. The studies of biodiversity of pathogen in human include intestine microbe colony, belly
button microbe colony, etc. Metals such as zinc and iron are essentials to bio-molecular pathways and would be
related to the underlying pathogen vitality. This project studies the biodiversity of cerumen via its metal content
and aims to develop an optical probe for metal content characterization. The optical diffusion mean free path and
absorption of human cerumen samples dissolved in solvent have been measured in standard transmission
measurements. EXFAS and XANES have been measured at Brookhaven Synchrotron Light Source for the
determination of metal contents, presumably embedded within microbes/insects/skin cells. The results show that
a calibration procedure can be used to correlate the optical diffusion parameters to the metal content, thus
expanding the diagnostic of cerumen in the study of human pathogen biodiversity without the regular use of a
synchrotron light source. Although biodiversity measurements would not be seriously affected by dead microbes
and absorption based method would do well, the scattering mean free path method would have potential to
further study the cell based scattering centers (dead or live) via the information embedded in the speckle pattern
in the deep-Fresnel zone.

Todd Holden, Queensborough Community College (United States)Sumudu Dehipawala, Queensborough Community College (United States)E. Cheung, Queensborough Community College (United States)U. Golebiewska, Queensborough Community College (United States)P. Schneider, Queensborough Community College (United States)

G. Tremberger, Queensborough Community College (United States)D. Kokkinos, Queensborough Community College (United States)D. Lieberman, Queensborough Community College (United States)Sunil Dehipawala, Queensborough Community College (United States)T. Cheung, Queensborough Community College (United States)